From the Eyes of a Juror

by Frank Terranova

  Chapter 11 – A Bus Ride and ‘a View’

  Wednesday afternoon June 4, 2008 – 12:55 PM

  Newlan didn’t have much of a chance to mull over the unforeseeable plight that had just been hoisted upon him, because before he could even begin to process what was happening, Judge Gershwin made the following announcement; “ladies and gentlemen of the jury, outside the courthouse sits a bus that is waiting to take us on what we call ‘a view’.”

  After a brief calculated pause, which was meant to let the reality of her revelation sink into the jurors’ minds, the distinguished judge went on to say; “we will be visiting a parking garage located in Newton Massachusetts on 435 Commonwealth Avenue, and from there we will be going to the Newton Police Station garage where you will be given the opportunity to examine a 1999 Nissan Maxima that belonged to Mr. Miller.”

  Judge Gershwin paused again, except this time her goal was to allow herself a moment to methodically ponder what she was going to say next, and after nearly 30 seconds of extended contemplation, she forged ahead with an explanation regarding just what a view entailed.

  “Now ladies and gentlemen, I should explain to you that a view is not in and of itself to be considered evidence. However, your examination of the garage, as well as the automobile, is intended to provide you with a better perspective with which to be able to visualize the evidence and the testimony that will be presented to you by the attorneys in this case. The attorneys will only be able to draw your attention to specific points of interest, but they will not be allowed to offer you any additional explanation. The only instructions you will be given are directives such as, ‘please look to your left or right, and note such and such’.”

  Sensing the trepidation in the jurors’ faces, Judge Gershwin gave them a warm reassuring smile before adding; “Our court officers will be escorting you to the waiting bus which will be departing shortly, but first, we have ordered an assortment of sandwiches for you to choose from. Also, now that the trial has officially started, we will be providing you with a variety of hot and cold lunch selections starting tomorrow.”

  “Well at least we’ll be getting free meals out of the deal,” muttered Newlan under his breath, but then he summarily came to the realization that this perk probably meant that the jurors wouldn’t be allowed to leave the premises for lunch, and a sick feeling of dread came over him.

  Newlan didn’t much care for the type of controlled environment he was convinced awaited them, and he realized right then and there that he was not going to particularly enjoy the jury duty experience. For Newlan, one of the joys of bachelorhood was the fact that he could come and goes as he pleased, and he had a sinking feeling that being selected as a juror on a high-profile murder trial was going to be akin to being married in that someone would be telling him what to do just about every minute of the day.

  Newlan sensed almost immediately that the circumstances called for a very structured routine, which was guaranteed to disagree with his fragile emotional equilibrium, and he softly moaned to no one in particular, “I’m not gonna like this…I’m not gonna like this at all.”

  As Newlan grumbled his displeasure, he momentary lost sight of the fact that he was in a packed courtroom, and he suddenly realized that his complaint, however softly mumbled, was heard by the juror seated next to him, a heavyset forty-something woman, who gave him a silent but stern look that he interpreted as a “stop your complaining” stare-down.

  But as it turned out, the groveling Newlan wasn’t going to be given the opportunity to wallow in self-pity much longer, because before he knew what hit him, he heard what would become an all-too-familiar command of “all rise” exclaimed by the court officer with the thick Boston accent, while at the same time his partner, the muscularly built one, waved the jurors out the door to the left of the judge and into the juror deliberation room which was situated directly across from the front of the courtroom.

  As Newlan and the rest of the freshly minted jurors anxiously made their way into the room for the first time, they were expeditious in their attempts to get familiar with their new surroundings; surroundings which would become their home-away-from-home for the next few weeks.

  Of course, for the jurors who had been selected yesterday, the lay of the land was already becoming old hat, and they politely showed the awkward newcomers the ropes.

  Newlan felt instantly uncomfortable with the idea of being jammed into a small room with a bunch of people he had never met before, and judging by the stone-cold look on the faces of the majority of his new colleagues, they were probably all feeling the same way.

  One small consolation for Newlan was the presence of an attractive juror who was sitting at the far end of the long conference table. And although her hands were under the table, which made it impossible for him to do his “wedding ring check”, he daydreamed hopefully nonetheless.

  “Man, being holed up in this room for a month is really gonna suck big-time…but who knows, maybe I’ll end up getting acquainted with that fine-looking lady over there, which just might make all of the aggravation worthwhile,” imagined Newlan. However, his rapidly crystallizing daydream, starring his latest romantic pursuit, not to mention his silent grumblings over the incommodious accommodations, would have to be put on the back-burner because within minutes of their entrance into the deliberation room, the court officer with the heavy Boston accent came storming into the room with a large box of cold sandwiches and a formal introduction.

  “For those of you who weren’t here yesterday, my name is Billy, and we’re going to get to know each other really well over the next few weeks.”

  Billy was a forty year old life-long Bostonian who had a receding hair line and a shamrock tattooed onto the fleshy portion of his right arm. And although he may have taken on the look of a prominent individual garbed in his court officer’s uniform, what with the handcuffs strapped to his belt and the two-way radio strapped to his shoulder, from Newlan’s street-smart vantage point, he didn’t necessarily come across as the law-and-order type.

  Newlan had Billy pegged as someone who liked to pound down a few pints of Guinness at his local pub; but it was an observation which of course he meant in a complimentary way; in a way that echoed the fact that they had something in common.

  “Alright, we have ham and cheese, turkey breast, tuna fish, and chicken salad,” proclaimed Billy in an authoritative tone as he dropped the box of sandwiches on the table. But right off the bat one of the jurors asked if there were any vegetarian meals included in the mix of sandwiches. It was as if a test of wills was underway between Billy and the jurors, and it remained to be seen who would blink first.

  “Sorry no veggie sandwiches, but tomorrow you’ll have more options to choose from…we had to improvise for today since we weren’t sure whether jury selection was going to be completed by lunch time or not,” explained Billy with a somewhat annoyed look on his face.

  “How long do we have for lunch before we go on our little bus ride?” asked another juror, emphasizing the words “little bus ride”.

  “Oh, no break for lunch today…were gonna have lunch to go. Take a sandwich, and be ready to board the bus in five minutes,” commanded Billy as he left the room.

  “Five minutes! I’d better find a bathroom before we leave,” thought Newlan. Luckily he didn’t have to look very far because the facilities were located in the back corner of the deliberation room. Unfortunately for Newlan however, there were at least ten jurors who had already queued up, waiting their turns, and so once again on this longest of days, he found himself making his way to the end of another line.

  By the time the line had dwindled down, more than fifteen minutes had gone by. But fortunately still no sign of Billy as Newlan entered the bathroom.

  “Billy probably said five minutes just to keep us moving on schedule,” presumed Newlan with a chuckle as he locked the door and made a visual pass of the small bathroom which, after
being used by a small army of people in a short period of time, was in desperate need of a blast of air freshener.

  The bathroom had no separate urinal, just a toilet, along with a small sink and mirror, a paper towel dispenser, and a waste basket; minor details perhaps, but details which nevertheless piqued the interest of the inquisitive Newlan.

  “If the deliberation room was a few feet smaller and the walls were removed from this bathroom, we’d basically be in a prison cell,” appraised Newlan as he relieved his bladder for the first time since leaving his condo, which, in turn, assuaged him in more ways than one; both physically and mentally.

  Newlan couldn’t help but think back to his younger days when he could drink up to six beers before having to go to the bathroom. Nowadays however, it was at least one trip to the bathroom for every one beer, and some of his friends were even worse than he was in that department.

  Whenever Newlan and his pals went out drinking at the local bar these days, their revelry would routinely be interrupted by constant trips to and from the bathroom, which would, in short order, have them resorting to gallows humor commentary such as; “Guess our prostates aren’t what they use to be…you know what they say ‘it’s a bitch getting old’.”

  Even so, right about then, Newlan wished he had a few beers on hand to smuggle onto the bus with him.

  “Now that would definitely spice up the trip to Newton!” exclaimed Newlan to the man in the mirror as he washed his hands. But since he wasn’t drinking beer before this particular trip to the bathroom, he was able to take care of business in no time flat. He then headed for the box of sandwiches, and when he found only a few left to choose from, he settled for a ham and cheese

  Right around the same time that Newlan was picking through the remains of the sandwiches, Billy reentered the room and announced; “all right now…it’s time for our little bus ride as one of you so aptly put it.”

  After ten years as a court officer, Billy had seen it all when it came to juries, so he always tried his best to keep the mood light. However, the Breslin jurors had other ideas. Many of them weren’t quite ready for departure just yet. One juror asked for more napkins. Another juror asked for utensils. Another juror complained that there were no diet soda’s left. Another wanted mayo instead of mustard. And on and on it went.

  “Look, we’ll straighten all of this out tomorrow, but for today we have to get moving along. Judge Gershwin wants to get the bus rolling as soon as possible,” replied Billy in what was now an unmistakably annoyed tone.

  Billy found from past experience that some juries were relatively easy to please, some juries were pains in the ass, and some juries could even drive him to drink. And although he wasn’t sure quite what to make of this jury just yet, they were clearly not off to a good start.

  On the other hand, Billy had befriended his share of juries over the years, usually when his gut feeling told him that they were a bunch of good people, and if they earned enough of his trust where he thought that they could keep a secret, he might even let them in on a few tidbits of information. For instance, he had allegedly confided the following observations to more than a smattering of jurors in his time; “I’ve seen guilty people walk, and I’ve seen innocent people go to prison…and it all depends on the luck of the draw. It all depends on whether the jurors are paying attention or not. It all depends on whether the jurors are taking their jobs seriously or not. It all depends on whether some wise-ass thinks he or she is smarter than everyone else…but don’t tell anyone I said so, since I’ll just deny it anyway.”

  But getting back to the jury that was currently under Billy’s command; he took charge of the situation as he always did, and even though he wasn’t quite able to quell all of their complaints, he finally got everyone organized and he led the way towards the elevator while the burly court officer took up the rear. It took two trips for Billy and his co-worker to get everyone down to the ground floor and out a specially secured exit where the king-sized bus sat idling, but at last they were ready to roll.

  Once Billy gave the word, the jurors hastily boarded the bus in an effort to escape the slow but steady drizzle of rain, and as Newlan made his way towards the back of the vehicle, he was suddenly reminded of his high school days, or in his case, the term, ‘high school daze’ might have been more appropriate. He longingly recalled how the ‘burn outs’ had the back of the bus reserved to themselves, and how they would sneak in a couple of tokes off a joint before first period.

  But alas, even though Newlan’s smoldering melancholy may have been ignited, he set aside his desire to go back in time long enough to observe Judge Gershwin seated in the first row of the bus, followed by the two district attorneys one row behind her, and adjacent to the DA’s sat Defense Attorney Gleason, all lined up as if they were camp councilors leading a field trip.

  Newlan scanned the length of the bus looking for Breslin, before coming to the conclusion that he was nowhere to be found, and from there he deduced that the defendant probably wasn’t allowed to make the trip.

  As Newlan’s gaze made its way back up to the front of the bus, he was surprised to find that Gleason was chatting amicably with DA Lyons. For some reason, he assumed that they would hate each other, never mind being on speaking terms.

  “It must be the win-at-all-cost mentality that’s been bred into me since I was a kid,” reasoned Newlan. He was pretty much positive that if he were a defense attorney, he wouldn’t be caught dead conversing with the DA, just like an athlete who refuses to shake his opponent’s hand.

  Newlan also found it curious that none of the jurors sat side-by-side even though the oversized bucket seats were meant to comfortably accommodate two people without a problem. Instead they all chose to sit in separate rows of the bus and quietly stare out the windows, with the exception of a couple of female jurors who were chatting softly across the aisle from one another.

  Of course, this behavior didn’t totally surprise Newlan, since, after all, at this point they were complete strangers to each other, not to mention the fact that there were plenty of seats on the bus; and yet he still found it all a bit odd.

  In any event, Newlan couldn’t really complain about his standoffish colleagues since he was as bad as the rest of them. He was perfectly happy sitting alone in the last row on the passenger’s side of the bus; that is until he noticed that there was a bathroom directly behind his seat.

  “I’d hold it in from here to Idaho before I use that bathroom,” croaked Newlan, and he accompanied his declaration with an involuntary shiver.

  After getting himself situated, Newlan poked his head out the window of the bus only to find that they hadn’t even left the courthouse grounds yet, and he wondered what the holdup was all about. It didn’t take long before he realized that the wheelchair-bound juror needed to be helped onto the bus. Fortuitously, the bus was equipped with a handicapped lift, although it took the driver a while to figure out how the mechanism worked; he obviously hadn’t had much experience with handicapped passengers.

  The delay ended up extending beyond a few minutes of tinkering, but finally, just when it seemed as though they were going nowhere fast, the bus driver waved over to the doorway, and the handicapped juror wheeled himself out towards the lift followed by Billy who was holding an umbrella over him…and with the push of a button, just like that, the wheelchair and its passenger were hydraulically raised into the cabin of the bus.

  And so with his jurors all present and accounted for, Billy made his way onto the bus and took a seat in the back row, to the left of Newlan…and at long last the bus slowly pulled out of the parking lot and headed southwest onto Interstate 128 for the 25 minute drive to Newton.

  As the bus merged onto the highway, Newlan observed that two Massachusetts State Police motorcycle officers were leading the way with their blue lights flashing.

  Wow a police escort…we must be important,” softly exclaimed Newlan, and when he i
nstinctively turned around to look out the back window of the bus, he noticed that there were two more biker cops taking up the rear.

  “It must suck driving a bike in the rain…although they probably think it is fun,” surmised Newlan as he sat back in the surprisingly comfortable bucket seat and tried to relax.

  As the bus trolled along, Newlan played back the events of the morning in his mind, trying to make some sense of the situation, but he was having a hard time coming to grips with his predicament.

  “How the hell did I get here anyway? One minute I’m minding my own business, reading my magazine…talking to Gloria Moorhead…and the next minute I’m riding on this bus, headed off on some sort of magical mystery tour…but I guess that’s life, from minute to minute you just never know what waits around the bend…man, you can’t make this shit up.”

  Even over the din of the roaring engines, Newlan couldn’t help but discern how quiet the interior of the bus had become, and even the two female jurors who had been talking up storm were now staring out the windows and picking at their sandwiches.

  Newlan himself was suddenly feeling quite hungry, and he made quick work of his ham and cheese sandwich, which was a lot better than he thought it would be.

  Newlan typically ate very light snacks when he was at work because large meals tended to made him tired. Although, every once in a while he would go out to lunch with his co-workers for a special occasion such as someone leaving for a new job, and he would invariably feel the need for a nap afterwards. And now after eating the rather abundant sandwich, he tried to keep his mind occupied by perusing one of the Rolling Stone magazine’s that he had brought along with him, but he found that he was unable to concentrate.

  Whether Newlan’s lack of focus was due to the sandwich, or the drone of the bus, or the fact that he had gotten up earlier than usual this morning was unclear, but regardless, as he skimmed through the magazine, his eyelids became very heavy until they slowly closed shut…and he fell into a dream.

  Newlan dreamed that he was at a Grateful Dead concert. The band was swinging to a hyperactive version of their song “Bertha” while the audience sang along with bandleader Jerry Garcia as he begged the aforementioned Bertha to get out of his life once and for all.

  Meanwhile, a voice reverberating just behind Newlan’s skull seemed to be shouting out to him; “Frankie…Frankie Newlan…it’s me, Freddie Miller…check out this weed, man…its killer stuff, man…killer stuff.”

  Newlan recognized the voice from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite place it. He couldn’t quite make out whether it was a friend or a foe. But nevertheless he turned around to confront the calling of his dark side. He turned around expecting a familiar mug, only to be met by a faceless set of eyes with an arm extended in the communal concert act of sharing a joint. And although he was startled by the presence of this otherworldly wraith, he gladly reached for the reefer stick anyway, expertly making the exchange like a relay-runner passing a baton. However, at the exact moment that both of their hands were holding the joint and the tips of their fingers touched, Miller’s hands and arms, and then his body, and then his face, slowly fizzled into a glowing skeleton.

  It was as if Miller’s bones were the grand finale of a spidery fireworks display, and at the apex of the spectacle, the fuming joint took off out of his hand like a rocket and circled around Newlan’s head while it picked up speed before exploding into a ball of flames just as it penetrated his temple.

  Newlan let out a sharp scream as he woke up in a panic, and he could plainly see that more than a few of his fellow jurors were staring at him with anxious looks which silently proclaimed; “this guy’s weird.”

  Newlan was disoriented and pale, while at the same time a cold sweat came trickling over his body. And at the moment, he was too confused to be worrying about what any of these strangers might have thought of him.

  “That was a bizarre dream,” whispered Newlan as he brooded over the meaning of the apparition that had just flooded his mind. Even though at this point in his ordeal, he could never have comprehended just how eerie the connection between himself and Fred Miller would soon become, he suspected that the dream symbolized something important, but what, he couldn’t say.

  In Newlan’s internalized mind, it was a well-documented fact that he suffered from strange dreams which would occasionally come true. And whenever this supernatural phenomenon occurred, it would freak him out for days. Years ago, he had even written a song, called “Omens”, about the unexplainable power of dreams, which went in part:

  Deep in the back of my simple mind

  Where the rivers turn to streams

  Thoughts I’m never thinking

  Animate my dreams

  Then I’ll read about it in the daily news

  Psychic powers give me clues

  Tell me where and I’ll tell you when

  Tell me the beginning and I’ll tell you the end

  “But this dream can’t come true…” mused Newlan, “…Fred Miller’s dead.” And try as he might to unravel the riddle, he had no idea what the dream meant…and if the truth be told, he didn’t really expect to figure it out, nor did he really want to figure it out.

  You see, despite these rare premonitions, Newlan wasn’t the type of person who dwelled on his dreams; he would typically forget them by the time the morning came, or more accurately he would subconsciously move them to the inner-most recesses of his mind.

  However as the trial moved on, Newlan’s dreams would begin to weigh heavily on his heart. As the trial moved on, the significance of his latest dream would become crystal clear. Perhaps in some way, he could communicate with Fred Miller…but what, pray tell, made it all possible?

  For his part, Billy, who was also dozing off at the time of Newlan’s panic attack, was staggered out of his slumber by the caterwauling juror, and with a look of concern on his face, he leaned in towards Newlan’s direction and gingerly whispered, “Are you OK? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “I think I may have…I think I may have,” replied a shaken Newlan as he leaned back in his bucket seat and held on for dear life, while at the same time the bus driver navigated full-speed ahead, onward along the slippery pavement, for the balance of the bumpy ride to that Godforsaken garage in Newton Massachusetts…where Fred Miller...met his violent end.